At this stage of the pandemic no one can be too careful. Countries and governments are making strict decisions as to how to maintain the disease within their countries. Strict rules are being implemented regarding travel and lists of countries that can be traveled to be being issued to citizens that want to take a holiday. If however these rules are broken and forbidden countries have been visited then those citizens will be dealt with repercussion.
One of the countries that are taking strict measures in Saudi Arabia they will impose a three-year travel ban on citizens travelling to countries on the kingdom’s ’red list’ under efforts to curb the spread of coronavirus and its new variants, state news agency SPA stated. It cited an unnamed interior ministry official as saying some Saudi citizens, who in May were allowed to travel abroad without prior permission from authorities for the first time since March 2020, had violated travel regulations.
”Anyone who is proven to be involved will be subject to legal accountability and heavy penalties upon their return, and will be banned from travel for three years,” the official said.
Saudi Arabia has banned travel to or transit at a number of countries including Afghanistan, Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Lebanon, Pakistan, South Africa, Turkey, Vietnam and the United Arab Emirates.
The official quoted that ”The Ministry of Interior stresses that citizens are still banned from travelling directly or via another country to these states or any other that has yet to control the pandemic or where the new strains have spread,”
The kingdom, the largest Gulf state with a population of some 30 million, on Tuesday recorded 1,379 new COVID-19 infections, bringing its total to 520,774 cases and 8,189 deaths. It saw daily infections fall from a peak above 4,000 in June 2020 to below the 100 mark in early January.
